September 23, 2003
Doing business with Mom & Pop
Independent America: Traveling the Pacific Coast Highway
By Hanson Hosein
HOQUIAM, WA, Sept. 23 — It’s not an easy thing to do these days:
Shun the superhighway, along with the chain fast-food restaurants and corporate
motels. But there’s a whole other U.S.A. out there, especially on the
nation’s historic and scenic byways. The best place to start and seek
out the best of Independent America is along the Pacific Coast Highway. And
on a recent road trip with my wife along the world-famous 101, we decided
to only do business with Mom & Pop. Our good intentions started badly
on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. In Hoquiam, the lumber industry
has come and gone. Weeds grew up around an abandoned independent gas station.
Meanwhile, across the street, a worker was putting up the last bits of polished
yellow plastic to celebrate the opening of yet another Shell gas station.
At least the local McDonald’s had seen fit to offer double cheeseburgers
garnished with Tillamook cheddar from nearby Oregon. And once we get rolling
down a scenic, wooded stretch of Highway 101, it was hard to ignore the signs
as lumber corporation Weyerhauser trumpeted “America’s First
Tree Farm.”
But then things picked up. In Artic, Clark’s Restaurant offered the “best
burger.” South Bend presented the first glimpses of the Pacific Ocean
and “Tsunami Evacuation Routes,” even as it declared itself the “Oyster
Capital of the World.” Washington may be the birthplace of the now-ubiquitous
Starbucks, but a few decades ago, even that was just a local coffee shop in
Seattle. And this caffeine-fueled demand is reflected in the number of drive-thru
espresso huts we saw along the way. From the start of our trip to the end in
northern California the score was Starbucks: 0 — drive-thru espresso
joints like “Morning Mist” in Wheeler, OR: 21.
A TOWN WITHOUT DRIVE-THRUS
But you won’t find any drive-thrus in Yachats, Oregon. This town of 650
is wonderfully eclectic and isolated, much like the microcosmic worlds of the
tidepools you can find down by the rugged shore. Mayor Lee Crombie said if
his zoning laws forbid all drive-thrus — the espresso or Burger King
kind — then it’s not discrimination. And fast-food corporations
are less likely to set up shop in a town where tourists are forced to get out
of their cars.
That’s okay with Corbin and his “get-them-out-of-the-car” attitude.
He wants to keep a “village feel” in Yachats (pronounced “Yahots,” Chinook
for “dark waters at the foot of mountains”).
“We’re really bucking trends,” the mayor said. “We hope
that as we grow, that we can maintain that feeling of smallness. We want to have
services here for the rest of our community. My personal bent is to seek out
independent business wherever we go. I really abhor finding the ‘Arches’ in
the middle of Florence, Italy.” In the middle Yahots, across the street
from City Hall, you’ll find Rachel Vander Thorne. She’s a few months
into a series of personal “firsts”: her first business, her first
pizzeria, and her first public days as a self-described transgender.
It could be the thin crust, the five-cheese blend, or her homemade dough and
sauce, but the offerings at Rachel’s Roadside Pizza are superb and well-balanced.
It could also be Rachel’s strong hands and long acrylic nails. She was
once a transmission specialist, but she says she much prefers her new line
of work and appearance.
“I don’t have to break my nails, and I don’t get greasy,” Vander
Thorne said. “When I became free, I was able to be me.” She says
she’s not worried if Domino’s ever comes to Yahots. “It’s
a pretty closed town. My pizza is the best in the world. I don’t have conveyor-belt
pizza.”
SEARCHING FOR THE INDEPENDENTS
A few miles down Highway 101, the sixty year-old See View Motel is full for
the night. True to the establishment’s name, manager Gina Hill is happy
to give us the last room, with a view of the Pacific. Each room is distinct
here, we get the “Princess and Pea,” replete with a raised bed,
medieval-looking antiques, a fireplace, and biscuits, sheets and towels…for
our dog. All for $75. “We recycle and we promote diversity. And people
like that,” Hill said. “And we’re dog friendly. So many times
we hear, ‘it’s so nice to have a break from the Holiday Inn.’”
Independent hotels and restaurants are easy to find in this part of the country.
But you can forget about gas stations. In Newport, the Oregon Coast’s
biggest draw, there was the usual host of Big Oil stations. We finally found
one that only had the word “Gas” for a sign.
“It’s all a crock,” said the man who filled the tank when I
tried to explain to him why we had sought his station out. He explained that
every station in town got its fuel from the same place, the Northwest Transfer
depot in Eugene. When I got my credit card receipt, it read “Newport Texaco.” He
had been right. It was all a crock.
Partial redemption could be found at the Canyon Way Café and Bookstore.
The clam chowder there is a thick as pudding, full of clams, bacon, and Russet
potatoes. The Dungeness crabs were fresh and flavorful, accompanied by light-as-air
angel hair onion rings.
“Never do restaurants, it’s just the hardest business,” owner
Roguey Doyle said. Which may be true, but bookstores in the age of Amazon and
Borders must be complete independent business suicide. On this score, however,
the only bookshop owner in Newport (population 8,000) says she’s doing
the right thing. Even if she can’t offer the deep discounts of the money-losing
online retailers.
“I like to do this. It’s frustrating. Lots of times it’s annoying,” Doyle
said. But she said customers like her enough to call her with the craziest of
questions. “What’s the time zone in South Africa? People use us as
a library. It’s fun. And we know everybody. And we know what people want.”
GOLDEN STATE KITSCH
When we crossed into California, we nearly blew it. We needed to find a bathroom,
and the closest and easiest one was inside a Burger King. Fair play nearly
forced me to make a purchase beforehand. But then we discovered the facilities
were unlocked and out of sight of the counter staff. So nary a soft drink or
burger were purchased, as we tried to stick to our principles. I figured I
had spent enough money at fast-food chains in my lifetime to get away with
this one little cheat.
Oddly enough, you won’t find any corporate deep fryers or 1-800 reservation
desk listing in beautiful Scotia, California. Its clapboard white houses are
entirely owned by the Pacific Lumber Company — Scotia is the only “company
town” left in California. And they do a good least one natural wonder
a day. In southern Oregon, we found the Sahara-like dunes that surround the
intense green of a Pacific rainforest. In northern California, there’s
the Avenue of the Giants: a narrow highway lined by statuesque, towering, centuries-old
redwoods.
There we encountered the perils of doing business with the independent entrepreneur:
copycats and shysters. California is the birthplace of fast food, the road
trip and kitsch. So we paid our money to explore the “Drive Thru” redwood
tree. We laughed when the Hummer in front of us couldn’t make it through
because the hole was too narrow. When it was our turn, we were utterly underwhelmed.
It was as if we had driven through two trees that had grown close together.
It was nothing like the photos we had seen, celebrating this 1930’s-era
attraction. Then we discovered later — it was the wrong one. The authentic “Drive
Thru” tree was miles to the south. We, and our three dollars, had been
taken.
But you must take the good with the bad when you turn your back on the predictability — and
reliability — of corporate American tourism. For there is much good in
this approach. Like Jackie Martine’s Seaweed Café in Bodega Bay,
not too far from San Francisco. She had opened her restaurant on July 4th.
Martine may be French, but she was celebrating her independence from her years
with a food management company in the city. And she was doing a roaring business — accomplishing
in nine weeks what she had expected to do in nine months. Martine said the
Pacific Coast was ideal place to take a chance. job of upkeep too, even with
the factory in the center of town that manufactures “value-added” wood
products.
Along the road, we managed to take in at least one natural wonder a day. In
southern Oregon, we found the Sahara-like dunes that surround the intense green
of a Pacific rainforest. In northern California, there’s the Avenue of
the Giants: a narrow highway lined by statuesque, towering, centuries-old redwoods.
There we encountered the perils of doing business with the independent entrepreneur:
copycats and shysters. California is the birthplace of fast food, the road
trip and kitsch. So we paid our money to explore the “Drive Thru” redwood
tree. We laughed when the Hummer in front of us couldn’t make it through
because the hole was too narrow. When it was our turn, we were utterly underwhelmed.
It was as if we had driven through two trees that had grown close together.
It was nothing like the photos we had seen, celebrating this 1930’s-era
attraction. Then we discovered later — it was the wrong one. The authentic “Drive
Thru” tree was miles to the south. We, and our three dollars, had been
taken.
But you must take the good with the bad when you turn your back on the predictability — and
reliability — of corporate American tourism. For there is much good in
this approach. Like Jackie Martine’s Seaweed Café in Bodega Bay,
not too far from San Francisco. She had opened her restaurant on July 4th.
Martine may be French, but she was celebrating her independence from her years
with a food management company in the city. And she was doing a roaring business — accomplishing
in nine weeks what she had expected to do in nine months. Martine said the
Pacific Coast was ideal place to take a chance. “We are probably in one
of the inland on the Interstate — when I would regretfully abandon my
Mom & Pop principles in the interest of cost, convenience and speed.
“The coast here is very beautiful, precisely because it has not yet been
colonized by a lot of commercial interests,” Martine said. “It’s
still very independent. I hope it will remain like that.”
And I hope I will find more to try and taste in the unexplored country that
is Independent America. It’s certainly a great way to travel.
Hanson Hosein covered the Middle East as an NBC News correspondent this
year. He wanted to take this road trip to reacquaint himself with some
of the wonders of the United States after six months overseas.
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